Award to Elizabeth Line is a damning indictment of British architecture

The Elizabeth line might just be the London Underground equivalent of an Oxford PPE graduate in the Tory cabinet: ie, a masterclass in failing upwards.

I say this because the newest Tube line, which finally opened in 2022 four years late and laughably over budget, just won an award. And not just any award – a big, illustrious award. The not-so-humble Lizzie line nabbed the Riba Stirling Prize, an annual tip-of-the-cap for architecture bestowed upon the best building in the UK. The “best building in the UK” – their words, not mine.

The first eyebrow-raising element of all this is, clearly, the term “building”. The Elizabeth line – transporting 700,000 people a day, and comprising 62 miles of track and 26 miles of tunnels along a route that calls in at 41 stops as it traverses from Reading and Heathrow airport in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east – is an indisputable feat of engineering. But a feat of architecture? With the best will in the world, I’ve never looked at the whole premise and thought, “Gosh, what an impressive... building.”

Even as I’ve descended underground to speed off on the purple line, named in honour of and officially opened by the late Queen Elizabeth II, I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed the design, as such. No shade thrown: surely that’s the point when it comes to infrastructure serving as workaday a purpose as public transport? To remain inconspicuous, non-controversial, plain? London Underground lines exude, for the most part, a commendably distraction-free, “Nothing to see here!” energy. The focus is, quite rightly, on function and an uncompromising commitment to clarity – enabling the millions of people using it every day to navigate their way around the 272-stop network and get to where they want to go.

Plenty of the stations on the Elizabeth line are the same as they ever were anyway; the stretch eastwards beyond Liverpool Street already existed as a TfL Rail service from 2015 to 2022 before the whole violet rebrand reclaimed it in the name of team Crossrail. Thinking about the new run of stops in central London, meanwhile, I guess the words that spring to mind are... white? Curved? Spacious? Vaguely futuristic? Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against the vibe. It’s like they took the Jubilee line – the second “youngest” member of the Tube family, with the newer extension sections completed in 1999 – and gave it some slightly more sci-fi tweakments befitting of the 2020s. But it still feels like a fairly damning indictment of the current state of British architectural design if this was deemed the “best” that the entire country has to offer.

Previous recipients of the Stirling Prize have included true architectural heavyweights: 30 St Mary Axe, better known as the Gherkin (2004); the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh (2005); the Dame Zaha Hadid-designed Evelyn Grace Academy (2011); the pioneering Bloomberg European Headquarters in London, dubbed the world’s “most sustainable office”, complete with dramatic brass ramp (2018).

I’m not the only dissenter when it comes to wondering where the Lizzie line fits in with all that went before: a number of prominent voices, far more expert than mine, have questioned this year’s prize allocation.

open image in gallery

“What does the Stirling actually represent any more?” Ian Ritchie, the renowned British architect behind projects including the multi-award-winning Susie Sainsbury Theatre and the Angela Burgess Recital Hall at London’s Royal Academy of Music, commented to The Times. While he commended the Elizabeth line for its engineering infrastructure – “by all means give it to the engineers, that would show respect and help dissolve professional design apartheid” – he argued that the Tube line is “hardly evolutionary architecture”. He pointed out that the bits that would actually fall under the remit of “architecture” largely consist of “endless tiling over an excellent civil engineering project”.

Liverpool University professor Alan Dunlop, a previous Riba award recipient, said that this year’s Stirling Prize shortlist was generally a “disappointing effort overall” compared with previous contenders, and highlighted that the Elizabeth line, while a “solid infrastructure project”, is “neither green nor inspirational, missing Riba’s commitment to net-zero building and rewarding excellence in architecture”.

Riba, meanwhile, called its chosen 2024 winner “monumental yet elegantly simple”, a description that’s hard to argue with. But it’s difficult not to feel disappointed for the other five shortlisted buildings – which, whether you care for them aesthetically or not, are at least indisputably buildings. It’s undoubtedly a London-centric selection, a fact that has attracted its own fair share of censure, with three of the nominees based in the capital (Chowdhury Walk council housing, King’s Cross Masterplan and the National Portrait Gallery). The two shortlisted buildings further afield were Wraxall Yard, a derelict dairy farm converted into fully accessible holiday accommodation, and Park Hill phase two. The latter is the latest phase in the massive renovation of Sheffield’s Brutalist, concrete icon of a housing estate – the largest listed building in Europe and the inspiration behind and setting for Richard Hawley’s critically acclaimed musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge. Any of these alternatives could arguably have made a more worthy winner.

But my real beef is that the Elizabeth Line, for all that it has finally come to marvellous fruition, is surely at least somewhat blighted by its beleaguered history – a stunning example of Britain’s seeming inability to complete any promised infrastructure project in a timely or economical fashion. The thing came in £4bn – that’s four billion pounds – over budget! Bond Street station alone ended up costing £570m more than initially projected! It took 13 years to accomplish and opened four years late! And even then, only with a limited service that forced passengers travelling between Shenfield and Paddington to change at Liverpool Street, and those travelling between Heathrow or Reading and Abbey Wood to change at Paddington! It may be fully functioning now, but that doesn’t erase the countless delays and issues that beset Crossrail from start to (very late) finish. In the words of a mother attempting to adhere to positive parenting techniques: should we really be rewarding this kind of behaviour?

Perhaps it’s indicative of just how low our expectations have dropped when it comes to public transport in the UK – we’ll give just about anything an award at this point. So bring on the Stirling Prize 2025; I can’t wait to see HS2 crowned best in show.